Pyramid Lake is a remnant of an ancient lake that covered the majority of northwest Nevada during the Pleistocene/ice age era. Pyramid Lake covers over 120,340 acres and is one the largest natural bodies of water in Nevada. The lake is home to the world’s largest cutthroat trout the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout. This particular species of cutthroat trout spent thousands of years evolving into the most dominant predator of the Pyramid-Tahoe-Truckee River system. Unfortunately due to over fishing, damming, and the introduction of other species, the original strain of these fish were nearly declared extinct until recent rediscovery of the strain near the Utah-Nevada border. This strain of Lahontan’s that evolved in the lake today are called the Pilot Peak strain. The Pilot Peak cutthroats grow at an astonishing rate and reached over 20 pounds putting this fishery on the map as one of the greatest in the world.

Pyramid Lake is a large lake that is has many beaches and points where anglers gamble to try and catch the fish-of-a-lifetime.

I’ve created a Google map to show different beaches and points of interest. I used GPSnauticalcharts to mark the depths on beaches. I self calculated the distance between the shore and 4′ of depth (average water an angler would fish in with a ladder) to identify a rough average fishing depth. The longer the distance to get to 4′ the shallower, the shorter the distance to get to 4′ the deeper. Clicking on the marked colored areas will show the fishing depth.

Light Blue = Shallow with an average fishing depth of 6-9′.
Dark Blue = Moderate with an average fishing depth of 6-12′.
Purple = Deep with an average fishing depth of +15′.